Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

  Maybe tonight. If Mr. Fox ran off with Bobby's wife, that alone would ruin Bobby. Black, black type. Screaming headlines. Even if Fox only loved the woman once, Mary could pretend that the knowledge of the incident broke her heart and drove her mad, and that would cut nearly as deep. If not tonight, she would bide her time. Hone the blade and wait.

  Mary reread the letter. The visit was planned for the small hours of the morning. Bobby's wife vowed to enter the house the princess had never seen. She swore that if Mr. Fox was indeed a real man, quiet Mary would never see it.

  Mary's blue eyes gleamed.

  Yes, she would see the house.

  Before the dawn.

  He was crying, tripping along the shore, running through the dark woods, crying harder with every step that he took. He tasted his own tears, so bitter and salty, and felt their warmth on his cheeks and smelled the night and the trees and his own misery.

  This was the last time. He hadn't planned it this way, but the prenuptial agreement had yet to be signed, and he had always promised himself that that would be the moment that forever signaled the end to the lieutenant. So, in his heart of hearts, he was still true to his word.

  He plunged through the woods, needles and branches scraping against his arms and face, punishing himself because no rationalization would do. If one was accepted, there would always be room for another. He'd failed, pure and simple, and it was time for punishment.

  Time to remove temptation.

  The summer house was dark, the chimney cold. Silent as a cat, he moved beneath the shadow of the porch. He placed the girl's head there, brushed the last bits of frosting from her hair, and closed her eyes.

  To leave her here. To give her away. Oh God, that was punishment.

  But not punishment enough.

  Slowly, he unsheathed the bayonet, raised it high, then brought it down swiftly, spearing the severed head to the cold hard ground.

  He would leave it there as a warning to himself and a promise to his beloved.

  A token of true love.

  Indeed, it was a castle. And it was empty —Mr. Fox's car was gone and an hour still remained before Bobby's wife was to arrive.

  Mary stood in the mirror-lined entry hall and stared at her many reflections, thinking how weak she appeared and knowing at the same time how strong she had become. She smiled and her reflections followed suit, for it was a castle, and one day it would be home to her secret self.

  Mary hurried down the hallway. She passed through several heavy doors decorated with brass lions, bears, and other animals, so enchanted with each discovery that she nearly laughed in delight. Finally, she came to a door above which a silver plate was mounted. Upon the plate was etched:

  "Be bold, be bold."

  Mary's eyebrows arched. A mystery!

  But she was brave, and she was curious, and she opened the door.

  She smelled the smells of her brothers' room as she walked among the photographs and medals. She stopped and stared at the scarred rifle that hung above the bar, and she considered Mr. Fox's quiet manner, which was quite unlike her brothers' boring, boasting ways. He of all men, quiet; he, who by the looks of this room had more right to boast and brag than other men. She spun round and round, looking everywhere.

  "I am inside Mr. Fox's secret self," she whispered. "His secret self has private chambers!" And then she saw a second plaque, mounted above a second door:

  "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold."

  But Mary was bold, now more than ever. She opened the door and went up a broad stairway that led to another door, over which was written:

  "Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

  Lest that your heart's blood should run cold."

  But Mary was bold, and she opened the door...

  .. .and came face to face with her true love's trophies.

  Bobby's wife was talking, but Fox wasn't listening, wasn't even looking at the woman. He stood on the driveway, his eyes fixed on the one-way window of his secret room. Icy fingers were traveling his spine, for he had the strange feeling that someone was watching him from behind that blind window.

  But that was impossible. No one was in the house, and no one would enter his secret chamber. No one.

  Suddenly the woman's arms were around his neck, and he pulled away. "How can you ignore me?" she asked. "How can you want that old maid when you can have me?"

  They always talk too much, he thought. They always jabber on, like gook whores. He made himself smile at her. God, she was crying now, and he remembered all at once that she'd been an actress.

  The lieutenant reached out. Gently, he took her gook hand. Quietly, in his most courteous voice, he invited her inside.

  Mary crouched behind the bar, fighting back tears.

  She wasn't afraid. She wasn't frightened by the death screams that echoed through the empty rooms.

  She was brokenhearted.

  Mr. Fox was her hunter. He had a secret self just as she did, and he lived in two worlds, just as she did. And without knowing any of these things, he had loved her with a gentle love that was indeed sweet and pure and perfect.

  The death screams ended. Other screams began, and they were deep, growling, and anguished.

  Mary wiped away a tear. She shared pain with her hunter, as well. She had never dreamed that together they could have so much.

  The door whispered open, and he came into the room. Mary heard the sound of Bobby's wife's high heels dragging across the hardwood floor, twin spikes clicking over inlaid floorboards. She heard a thump as Fox planted the body on a barstool, saw her sister- in-law's head hanging over the side of the bar, bloody wisps of hair glued to dead staring eyes while other long strands danced free, tickling the necks of bottles of vodka, bourbon, and gin.

  Fox screamed curses at the corpse. "I'll have something from you, my dear. A present for my Mary!"

  The knife came down hard. A severed hand, one finger encircled with a diamond ring, slid across the bar and flopped at Mary's feet.

  Fox swore again, but didn't come searching. "Time to put you to bed, little wife," he said, and the last word made Mary tingle. The big man hefted the corpse over his left shoulder and carried it through the door behind the bar, not seeing Mary at all.

  He would have seen her had he looked, for she hadn't moved. She sat staring at the diamond ring, the gift that her hunter meant to give her. Crying once more, she thought what a wonderful gift it would have been, had the hunter inside her not recognized it first as a wonderful tool.

  He came to the summer house the next morning, another man, quiet and gracious and ready to sign the prenuptial agreement. Alma Reilly served a splendid breakfast of steak and eggs and honey cakes, but Fox, seated across from Mary, had no appetite for anything but a smile from his love.

  Finally, she allowed him to catch her eye. "Are you all right, Mary dear?" he asked. "You seem awfully pale."

  "I had a bad night," she said. "Horrible dreams."

  Bobby smirked. "Dreams go by contraries, sis. Tell us your dream."

  Mary turned to her younger brother, disallowing his bad temper, enjoying how small he seemed sitting next to his wife's empty chair. "I dreamed that I went last night to Mr. Fox's estate, and I found it in the woods, with great granite steps and a mirrored hallway and heavy doors, and over one of those doors was written:

  'Be bold, be bold.' "

  "But it is not so, and it was not so," said Mr. Fox, looking down at his breakfast.

  Mary's eyes widened as incredulous expressions crossed her brothers' faces. She did not look at her lover, who never boasted, never bragged. "And I went into that room, and inside that room was another doorway, over which was written:

  'Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.' "

  Fox whispered, "It is not so. My love, tell me it was not so."

  Mary wanted to reach out and take her lover's hand, for she knew she was causing him pain. Instead, she looked at the sweat on Jack's brow and said, "And then I opened that door and
went up a broad stairway that led to another door, over which was written:

  'Be bold, be bold, but not too bold.

  Lest that your heart's blood should run cold.' "

  "It is not so... it was not so." Fox said, and Mary saw everything that was hidden behind his eyes. He added, "And, sweet Mary, God forbid it should be so."

  Mary smiled sadly at Mr. Fox, the lover who placed trophies at her feet like a loyal pet, but the hunter inside her pushed her on. "And then—and then I opened the door, and the room was filled with bodies of poor dead women, all stained with blood."

  Jack's mouth opened, but no words came out. Bobby reached to the empty chair at his side.

  Fox's hand drifted to his ribs, scratching, his face now pale and empty. "It is not so. It was not so. And God forbid it should — "

  "Then I dreamed that I looked through the window and saw you, Mr. Fox, coming up the front steps, dragging after you a young lady, rich and beautiful."

  "It is not so...was not so...God forbid...."

  "I hid behind the bar, when you, Mr. Fox, came into the room, dragging Bobby's wife by the arm. And as you passed me, Mr. Fox, I thought I saw you try and get off her diamond ring, and when you could not, Mr. Fox, it seemed to me in my dream, that you snatched up a knife and hacked off my sister-in-law's hand to get the ring."

  Fox looked to Jack. "It is not so."

  "But it is so," Mary said, "and it was so. Here's hand and ring I have to show." And with that she pulled the lady's hand from her dress, and pointed it straight at Mr. Fox, all the while thinking of the secret room in her castle; and her beloved Puss 'n' Boots; and the trophy speared with a bayonet, safely hidden beneath the folds of a lavender lace bedspread that lay tangled and wrinkled in the bottom of a laundry basket.

  Shaking, Bobby snatched the silver steak-knife from his plate.

  Jack reached under his coat and produced a dainty pistol, all in one fluid motion.

  Mary smiled at her hunter. "I wish it were not so."

  Grinning furiously, Fox scratched his ribs and waited.

  In the last moment of silence, the diamond ring sparkled.

  Hard-Boiled Horror

  My buddy Joe Lansdale has called me "a multi-genre writer, sometimes all in one story." I plead guilty. Mixing and matching genres is something I've become known for, and something I've always enjoyed.

  As a kid I was blissfully unaware of the dollar words such as "genre." What I did was write stories. Western stories, war stories, action-adventure yarns—I was all over the map. A good number of these tales included a monster along with the usual trappings, so I guess I was bending genre from an early age. I even wrote a series of stories about an elite military unit that circled the globe hunting everything from Japanese goblins to Himalayan Yetis to that big green thing that's said to swim around Loch Ness. The hero of these stories was Major Colt Maverick, a name I chose because I thought it reeked of masculinity and Old Spice and testosterone. In retrospect, I'd say "Colt Maverick" has a little too much equine-barnyard scent, but hey... I was about twelve at the time I thought him up.

  The good major's adventures aside, my familiarity and facility with different genres was a plus when I was breaking in as a pro. By then I had learned to think about such things in regard to specific markets, and that worked to my advantage when I was trying to build my resume. I'd hear about a horror anthology, and I'd try to do something a little different than most submitters by splicing genres. Early on I sold lots of horror/crime hybrids—but we'll get to those in a minute. First a few words about breaking into the short story market.

  Unfortunately, there's no simple trick to make your stories rise from the slush pile to publication. I wish there were—I could have used it. The main advice I have to offer is of the tried-and-true variety: know your market, follow editorial guidelines, turn out quality stories, and (hopefully) juice those stories with a little something extra that will make them stand out from the rest of the submissions crossing the editor's desk.

  Simple advice, but the follow-through isn't simple at all, especially when you're submitting to top-drawer anthologies or magazines. When you start playing the game at that level you need to bear down, work hard, and get about as serious as a heart attack, because your story doesn't just have to be as good as the submissions from the "name" writers you're competing against, it has to be better... and I'm talking better by a long shot, not by a hair. Otherwise, why should an editor take a chance on you, an unknown, rather than give the slot to an established pro with a name readers will recognize when they eyeball the table of contents page?[12]

  So my multi-genre approach was something a little different, and it helped make my early stories stand out. Now, I'm not saying that writing genre-bending fiction was my key to breaking into the pro markets, but the multi-genre approach definitely opened a couple of doors for me. As I've said, most of my early published stories were horror/crime hybrids— I call 'em hard-boiled horror stories. These were the first stories that got me noticed.

  Of course, I wasn't the first writer to write hard-boiled horror. Way back when, Robert Bloch wrote more than a few tales that would qualify as such. So did most of Bloch's L.A. contemporaries, from William F. Nolan to Harlan Ellison. These gentlemen were influenced by the classic pulps, and, perhaps of equal importance, by radio shows such as The Shadow, The Whistler, Inner Sanctum and Suspense. For the generation of writers that followed Bloch and company, you can add comic books to the equation. Especially EC comics—if you're familiar with those you already know that there aren't too many issues of Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, or The Haunt of Fear that you can pick up without running into at least one story with crime and supernatural elements.

  All of the above ingredients were cooking in my brainpan for years before I sat down at the Mac with the scorched side and started turning out tales I hoped to sell. Probably the best of my early attempts at hard-boiled horror were "Guignoir" and "The Cut Man," which were the first stories that got me into the annual year's best horror anthologies. Other personal favorites from this period are "Dead Celebs," "Tombstone Moon," and "Styx." Other attempts were... well, to put it kindly, others were what might best be termed "learning experiences."

  "The Baddest Son of the Bitch in the House" fits in the latter camp. For me, the most interesting thing about it is the hardass voice—that's what carried me through the reread for this book, anyway. The rest of it's about what you'd expect... if you've read enough EC comics, that is. But I'll have more on that (and the perils of writing trick endings) later.

  I "sold" this story the first time I sent it out. I was delighted, but only because I hadn't yet learned that when it comes to writing the word "sold" doesn't necessarily involve money changing hands. The editor who "bought" the story was putting out a little magazine that looked like it was going places. This guy had started up shop about the same time that Rich Chizmar was publishing the first issues of Cemetery Dance, and for a while it looked like Rich's magazine and the publication-which-will-remain-nameless were even money to succeed Dave Silva's The Horror Show as the premiere small press publication.

  Anyway, the editor-who-will-remain-just-as-nameless-as-his-publication accepted "The Baddest Son of a Bitch in the House." Somewhere in there he accepted two other stories from me. He put me through rewrites on a couple of them—something I was rarely asked to do—and he actually commissioned an artist to adapt the third as a comic ("When the Fruit Comes Ripe," a story you'll also find in this volume [sorry... at present the commissioned artwork is only available in my office closet]).

  None of my stories ever saw print in the nameless magazine. Still, apart from hearing that the editor in question once served up cans of cat food as chip-dip at a convention, I really don't think he was a bad guy. Maybe not smart, but not bad, either. I do think he bit off way more than he could chew, though, and I'm not talking about Friskies. As the years passed and I talked to other writers who were breaking into the horror market in the ea
rly nineties, I discovered that nearly everyone I knew had "sold" a story to this guy.

  Some people even claimed that accepting a story was his clever ploy for drumming up subscriptions. Hey, "buy" a story and get a subscription check from a grateful writer. After all, there's a sucker born every minute, right? I don't know. Stranger things have happened, but I'd hate to think that I was quite that stupid, because—you guessed it—I subscribed!

  Anyway, the nameless magazine soon went belly up, and I lost a few bucks on my subscription. Needless to say, I was never paid for my stories. About all I've got to show for the endeavor is a half-dozen letters from the nameless editor, including one regarding 'The Baddest Son of a Bitch in the House."

  He wanted to use that one in a "Special Offensive Titles Issue." I'm not kidding. The only problem was that my title wasn't quite offensive enough for him. After all, he'd commissioned a special piece entitled "A Blow Job for Joey," so it should have come as no surprise that he wanted me to change the title of my piece to" The Biggest, Baddest Motherfucker in the House."

  You can imagine my delight, reading that.

  But, boys and girls, that's the life of a writer.

  And, in its own way, that's editorial advice at its finest.

  Because when you come right down to it, writing's all about choosing just the right word, isn't it?

  THE BADDEST SON OF A BITCH IN THE HOUSE